Terminal Tales: Start Here

Introduction

Welcome to Terminal Tales, a practical series on hardening real Linux systems: locking down user accounts, wiring up PAM, controlling root and sudo, and generally making a box a lot harder to walk into than it was out of the install media.

The hands-on posts assume you’re already comfortable moving around a Linux system: navigating directories, editing files in vi or nano, filtering output with grep, and reaching for a man page when something breaks. If you’re not there yet, this page is where to start. Below is the exact path I’d recommend to get there, built around one idea: you don’t need to spend much money to become genuinely good at this. You need practice and a willingness to struggle.

The series so far

Once you’re comfortable at the terminal, here’s where the hands-on hardening begins:

1. Securing the User Jungle — account hardening from the ground up: /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, password policy, lockouts, resource limits, root and SSH access, and monitoring user activity.
2. PAM Like a Pro — a deep dive into Pluggable Authentication Modules: the four module types, the control gates, pam_faillock, pam_rootok, and a cautionary tale of breaking auth and putting it back together.

More entries are on the way. For now, go get a Linux install running, break something, and let’s get started.

Getting cozy with Linux

The single most valuable move you can make is to put a real Linux install on real hardware and daily-drive it. Not a virtual machine you spin up to “practice” and then close when you want to get actual work done. A VM gives you an escape hatch back to your comfortable OS, and you’ll take it every time something gets annoying.

Daily-driving takes that hatch away. When your everyday machine runs Linux, you stop being someone who is learning Linux and quickly become a Linux user. You’ll hit real problems: a package that won’t install, a display that won’t wake, a permission you don’t understand, and you’ll fix them because you have to. That’s the identity shift that actually matters, and it doesn’t happen from a VM you visit on weekends.

Pick a beginner-friendly distro (Fedora, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint are all fine landing spots), install it on a spare laptop or your main machine, and force yourself to live there. I personally daily-drive Fedora, but I’m not tribal in any recommendation. Don’t worry about what distro you learn on. Make backups so that you can confidently break things and repair them.

Build the foundation for (almost) free

You do not need to spend thousands of dollars on certifications to get the knowledge behind them. Three free-to-cheap resources will take you a long way:

Professor Messer’s YouTube courses. He has full, free video series covering the CompTIA A+, Network+, and Security+ material. You can learn the material for free and entirely skip the roughly $1500 in exam fees. If you find yourself engaged in the material, there are many resources such as Udemy that offer cheap practice tests for $20~. You walk away with the genuinely valuable, broadly-applicable IT foundation that the certs are supposed to represent, without the bill. That knowledge sets you up for success across pretty much every avenue of IT.

That being said, writing and passing the aforementioned certifications can absolutely still open doors for you in the industry. In some organizations there are actually hard HR requirements for them, especially for Security+ in a lot of government-contracted roles to satisfy the DoD 8570/8140 directive in the US.

A free Linux+ course. Since this series is all about Linux, one more resource is worth your time: a well-regarded, free Linux+ video course. It isn’t one of Messer’s, but it’s solid from what I’ve seen, and it pairs perfectly with daily-driving a real install. Same idea as above: learn the material, and treat the CompTIA Linux+ exam itself as optional unless a door you want asks for it.

TryHackMe’s free rooms. Reading and watching only gets you so far; you have to put hands on keys. TryHackMe’s free tier has more than enough guided, hands-on rooms to turn theory into muscle memory. Work through the beginner Linux and security paths and you’ll cement everything above.

An honest word on certifications

The industry surrounding Linux and Security is a meritocracy that hinges on demonstrable capacity with an honest bridging of integrity others in the industry can vouch for from your network. Work experience and networking will trump degrees and certs, because they are evidence you can actually do the work.

That being said, there are some heavy-hitters in the Linux world that are well-respected and will both help your learning journey and open career doors for you:

• RHCSA (Red Hat Certified System Administrator) -> An undisputed gold standard for enterprise Linux because its rigorous, live-lab exam format forces candidates to prove practical, hands-on administration skills on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) rather than just memorizing answers.
• RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer) -> The premier automation-focused credential for advanced professionals because it validates deep infrastructure-as-code expertise using Red Hat Ansible, which is a mandatory skill for modern DevOps environments.
• CompTIA Linux+ -> The ideal vendor-neutral benchmark for entry-to-mid level IT careers because it provides broad foundational knowledge across multiple distributions, making it highly recognized by HR managers during initial hiring screens.
• LFCS (Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator) -> A highly respected, performance-based certification for cloud-native paths because it is issued by the creators of Linux and aligns perfectly with modern containerized environments.
• LPIC-2 (Linux Engineer) -> A valuable validation for engineers in mixed environments because it proves advanced competencies in managing medium-to-large multi-distribution networks and advanced storage setups.
• LPIC-3 (Linux Master) -> The gold standard for top-tier security and enterprise compliance because its specialized security track is highly valued in government and defense-contractor environments.
• CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator) -> The ultimate Linux-adjacent credential for modern tech stacks because it forces candidates to master underlying Linux kernel features like networking, namespaces, and cgroups to manage container architectures.
• Oracle Linux Certified Professional (OCP) -> A high-value niche credential for enterprise environments because it targets optimization, heavy database workloads, and cloud infrastructure specifically for Oracle-centric data centers.

July 24th, 2025